WhatsApp has avoided the pressure of E2EE backdoors and whatever politics because they were never needed.

1. They collect all the metadata in unencrypted format and link it to phone numbers, making a huge social graph.

2. Backups are not encrypted by default and enabling of them is pushed. So the messages were never actually encrypted for most people and police can get messages without the actual phone.

3. iCloud E2EE backup fight in UK was mostly because of 2. as people started to opt-in for encryption.

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gruez 5 hours ago | parent [-]

>3. iCloud E2EE backup fight in UK was mostly because of 2. as people started to opt-in for encryption.

That doesn't make any sense. Why did uk want to start a fight over icloud E2EE backups (opt-in) but not whatsapp E2EE backups (opt-in)?

	▲	nicce 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> That doesn't make any sense. Why did uk want to start a fight over icloud E2EE backups (opt-in) but not whatsapp E2EE backups (opt-in)? Default iCloud backup always included WhatsApp too, even if it was disabled in the app or the app used encrypted backups. And many other things, so it was not only about WhatsApp. Even for WhatsApp alone, it was slightly more useful.